Saturday, August 31, 2013

I
work for a very large company. Well, maybe it isn’t so much a “company” as an “organization.”
OK, “organization” may be somewhat of a misnomer because it isn’t, well,
terribly organized. But I believe I once saw a statistic quoted in a press
release implying that the cluster of people paid by the same entity as I am are
technically coworkers in a behemoth so behemothish it very well may be the
largest employer in not only my city, but perhaps the entire universe. There
are so many people employed by this nebulous group that pretty much everybody
in a certain echelon of society (hint: not THAT echelon, look lower) has their
bank account replenished every 15th and 30th of the month
in the same way I do. I will not identify for whom I work, but you can easily
find out by asking either the NSA or Russian government.

I
provide this information as a context for you to understand that the powers
that be or not to be have literally google number of people from whom to choose
when assigning people to actual jobs. And these jobs are usually union-driven,
with discrete tasks simultaneously so specific and vague, that I fear my cat
may one day become my supervisor. Yes, I now have a cat. Long story.

So,
for those of you who work in smaller companies, where managers and supervisors
and the like struggle with hiring employees with the right “skill set” to “fit”
the “job,” take heart. It isn’t rocket science. Does the job applicant have
somewhat of a pulse? Perhaps a pulse that is supplemented by Beta-blockers or a
pacemaker? Even better. Then viola! You have yourself the perfect employee for
the job. No matter what the job is.

Where
I work, employees are chosen for their positions not by any particular
qualifications, but by where they appear on a list of names. The list isn’t by
actual experience in the field, alphabetical or, clearly, by SAT score. I
believe the list is compiled in a way IO professionals refer to as the “throw darts
at a dart board” method. By the way, I purposely did not spell out the acronym
for IO (sorry, AP Manual of Style), to give you a flavor of what it is like to
work in a faceless bureaucracy. It is fitting that my name begins with a “K,”
just like Kafka’s Joseph K.

The
way you find out you have been selected to be interviewed for a position is you
receive both spammish (postal) mail and phone calls offering you the
opportunity to vie for a position. Neither the mail nor caller provide any
details whatsoever about the position, aside from the union-generated title and
legally vetted tasks. Apparently being a Ph.D. in a completely sedentary job
requires no more than 50 pounds of lifting. I guess I am in violation every
time I heave myself out of my chair.

Just
a head’s up for those of you in the job market. The more words and syllables to
the job title, the fewer qualifications you need. I always suspected this, but
had my suspicions confirmed recently when a slew of “fashionably dressed”
people paraded down the hallway, presumably being considered for a job title
with at least 65 qualifiers, but ending with the word “clerk.” My only
knowledge of “clerks” prior to this had been Supreme Court law clerks and
differently “fashionably dressed” clerks at Tower Records. None of these
applicants fit into either category, adding to my confusion.

So
once you have been placed on the “list,” sometime within one day and 40 years
later you may receive the aforementioned letter and phone call. The letter, I
suspect, is sent to literally millions of people, or at least that was probably
the case before the company ran through its stash of “Forever” stamps.

The
call, however, may be reserved for only the top 10,000 on the list. Often, you
are already working for the company, but on the list for a promotion or just to
get the hell away from your current boss. In case you are waiting for “the
call,” I will give you a sneak peek: At the most professionally inopportune
moment, a blocked number pops up on your phone. You assume it is either your
child’s school or that your home is being foreclosed on. You pick up the call,
imagining all sorts of horrible possibilities. And the horror on the other end
of the phone is even worse than what you imagined. A monotone muttered in an
accent indicating that English is not even in the top 10 languages this
employee has encountered. Usually in an accent also indicating this person
recently relocated from a part of the world where horrific human rights abuses are
reported to occur. You immediately fear for their safety, but then realize they
are explaining they work for your company and may very well be calling from
down the hall, at which time you fear for your own safety. While your cortisol is soaring, you are
being repeatedly, relentlessly, monotonously asked if you want the interview
time being offered, despite the fact that it clearly conflicts with the actual
job you currently have, and would show an enormous lack of professionalism to
leave your work at the designated time. Is this a trick to test your work
ethic? Or is it really a means to recruit you as a spy for a hostile
government, where your accent would be considered “hard to understand”? Your
efforts to glean more information about the job are stymied by the caller’s
lack of communication skills. Aha! Part of their nefarious plan! You will be
lured into a “To Catch a Predator” type scenario for monolingual, career-driven
people!

The
applicants who don't find themselves outed on MSNBC’s “Lockdown” eventually
find themselves with a plastic badge and dozens of keys. The IDs are color
coded, and get you a 10 percent discount at Subway, but don’t seem to make much
of a difference in terms of job expectations. Again, the pub dartboard
apparently had its role at a managerial liquid lunch, because in addition to the
non-communicative phone callers, I have encountered a blind chartroom employee
and a wheelchair-bound amputee grounds keeper. The latter, I might add, I
almost mowed down in the parking lot because he was inexplicably wheeled smack
dab in the middle of the lot, smoking a cigarette.

Clearly,
there is a method to this madness because many, many, many people apparently
make their way to the mysterious “interviews” and are “hired” for “jobs,”
because there are plenty of people milling around the circa 1986 Xerox and fax
machines in the various industrial complexes throughout the greater
metropolitan area. And most of them drive nicer cars than I do.